Stock Offering

After canceling a stock offering and failing to raise private equity, independent studio the Film Department is shutting down. Headed by former Warner Bros. and Miramax Films executive Mark Gill, the Film Department saw only one of its movies released in the U.S. since launching in 2007: the Jamie Foxx-Gerard Butler thriller "Law Abiding Citizen. " That picture was released by Overture Films in 2009 and grossed a solid $72 million. The Film Department produced only two other movies, both romantic comedies.

The top financial executive who helped guide General Motors Co. back to profitability and then its return to being a publicly traded company stepped down suddenly Thursday. GM Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell, who worked at the automaker only since January of 2010, said he had achieved his goals for the company and no longer wanted to be a top finance executive. "I won't be a CFO again," Liddell, 52, said. GM's board passed over Liddell in its search for a new chief executive last year when Edward E. Whitacre Jr. quit, settling on Dan Akerson instead.

LinkedIn Corp., a website for professionals to connect, may be the first company to quench investor thirst for the red-hot social networking market. The Mountain View, Calif., company has been quietly preparing an initial public offering for as early as the first three months of this year. LinkedIn has hired investment bankers Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase to advise it after a round of interviews in November. The size of the offering is not known, but it is expected to be small relative to the company's value.

The Treasury Department said Thursday that it had received an additional $1.8 billion from the General Motors Co. stock offering last month, bringing the total haul to $13.5 billion to help pay down the automaker's taxpayer-funded bailout. The additional money came from about 54 million GM shares owned by the Treasury that the underwriters of GM's initial public offering had the option to purchase within 30 days of the Nov. 23 offering. The sale of those shares three days later added to the $11.7 billion the government received from its initial sale of shares and cut the government's ownership stake nearly in half, to 33.3%, the Treasury said.

November 19, 2010 | By Walter Hamilton and Jerry Hirsch, Los Angeles Times

The old saying that what's good for General Motors is good for the country took on new meaning Thursday after the carmaker went public in a $20-billion-plus stock offering. General Motors Co. shares accelerated smoothly in their first day of trading, gaining 3.6% from the higher-than-expected price the company sold them for late Wednesday. The solid debut was especially good news for the Obama administration, which is eager to show it can recoup the nearly $50 billion it plowed into the auto giant last year.

November 16, 2010 | By Walter Hamilton and Nathaniel Popper, Los Angeles Times

General Motors Co. is set to reemerge as a public company this week in one of the year's hottest initial public stock offerings, but many American taxpayers who helped rescue the company won't be going along for the ride. That's because most Americans won't have access to the new shares of the Detroit automaker. And many of those who do are likely to be well-heeled customers at big Wall Street firms. The situation is not much of a surprise on Wall Street, where little guys often are shut out of deals, especially coveted ones where demand far outstrips supply and where fast-rising prices usually provide quick profits to anyone getting IPO shares.

General Motors Co. filed to become a publicly traded company again, the first step in its plan to sell stock that would pay back billions of dollars of taxpayer support that allowed the automaker to rebuild itself after years of devastating losses. In a regulatory filing Wednesday, GM highlighted its profitable resurgence from the depths of bankruptcy as it pitched what's expected to be one of the biggest stock offerings ever. Wall Street has anxiously awaited for the filing to learn how the giant deal will play out. The initial public offering comes at a time when GM's financial fortunes are on the rise.

Online video site Hulu, which has emerged as one of the most popular places to watch television shows on the Internet, wants to see whether Wall Street will tune in as much as the public. The company — owned by media giants News Corp., NBC Universal and Walt Disney Co. and private equity firm Providence Equity Partners — is in talks with investment banks about launching an initial public offering as early as this fall. The news was first reported Monday by the New York Times.

Edward E. Whitacre Jr., the chief executive who led the turnaround of General Motors Co, is stepping down at the end of the month. The surprise announcement came as the nation's largest automaker reported $1.3 billion in quarterly profit. The earnings were a stark contrast to the staggering $12.9-billion loss the company recorded in the second quarter last year, as it was emerging from bankruptcy protection after receiving more than $52 billion in federal bailout funds. Whitacre, a former AT&T executive who came out of retirement to run GM, will be leaving on a high note.

Skype, a pioneer in Internet phone service, is planning to go public. The Luxembourg company registered for up to $100 million in American depository shares in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. Skype said in the filing that it had not yet decided on the number of shares in its initial public offering or the price range. The company is looking to have its shares traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Silver Lake Partners, a private-equity firm in Menlo Park, Calif.